


Warm in Bed

by DixieWilliams



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Boy Erased (2018), Consent Issues, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DixieWilliams/pseuds/DixieWilliams
Summary: Phil blinked up at the ceiling and rubbed a hand across his eyes.  He cleared his throat again.  He could make out most major details of the room, but it didn’t take an expert in body language, only nine years of companionship with Dan to tell him that Dan was waiting to say something.





	Warm in Bed

**Author's Note:**

> This work is NOT about a non-consensual encounter between Daniel Howell and Phillip Lester, but it does contain elements of non-con discussion, especially as it relates to rape scenes specifically in Boy Erased. Please tread with caution if that's a sore or touchy topic for you. 
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy! Our little goobers have certainly grown up in the world. And the more they reveal to us, the more I think they're holding back. I saw the film Boy Erased and, man, did it make me think about the Phandom and their obsession with October 19, and how the real story is likely pretty different. It's always a joy to revisit Dippers and Pippers (or at least my fictional worldverse characters of them.) Once again, I can only say, that I hope those two assholes love each other as much as we all like to picture it in our minds.

“Bloody Christ,” mumbled Phil, turning over, his heart pulsing in his chest, the nightmare of being tangled in a hot swarm of corgis resolving itself into a crumpled duvet, his right arm dragging beneath him until he felt like his little finger was going to rip away from his hand. 

_Why wouldn’t the duvet move?_

He squinted, watched Dan tapping in the light reflected onto the mirrored surface of the headboard, his lashes dark as he blinked and scrolled, the phone held a hands-length away from his face. Phil coughed roughly. The older he got, the more he _(felt)_ sounded like an eighty-year-old man when he first woke. His dry throat cleared somewhat with a quick drink of water from the bedside as Phil balanced on one elbow. The smell of the candle that he’d burned just before dropping exhausted into bed was mixed with the rich clean scent of that new body wash they’d purchased before their flight. Phil turned back to where Dan lay, pillow scrunched under his head a sharp angle, duvet tucked beneath his arms, hair still slick and wet. Phil squinted. He could make out the big things, like shoulders and torso and the eye glints and eyelashes, but he had no idea if Dan was watching him or not. Dan’s elbows were sharp and pointed out to either side as he brought the phone closer to his face. The light reflected from Phil’s vantage in twin pinpoints of light, moving as he read.

Phil scratched one forearm. “What’re doin here?” he whispered. He leaned his forehead against Dan’s shoulder. When he’d gone to bed, after watching an hour of mindless TV, Dan was still unpacking, and he barely waved to him as he had dug out cords and souvenirs. 

Dan tucked his chin against the crown of Phil’s head and replied, “Go back to sleep. I snuck in about an hour ago.” He relaxed back into his mounded pillows and Phil heard the faint snick-snick of his fingers tapping a search.

Phil grabbed the pillow and turned toward his dresser, pulling the duvet around him, feeling Dan’s bulk holding it back stubbornly in the corner. The light from his branches, what Dan called his “fancy tree” in that soft mocking voice which spoke more fondly to Phil anything else, cast a faint white light in the corner, their white spirals going up and up and up above the dresser’s top. Phil settled his head into his pillow, one hand clenched beneath it, his other arm drawing the covers up to his shoulder. The pure white light spilled over his cup of water, his phone charger with its faint glowing screen, the scattered brick-brack formed but undetailed on the counter, an errant pant sticking out of the drawer where he’d stuffed it full to overflowing four hours earlier. 

“You’re not jet-lagged?” Phil reached his left hand backwards beneath the covers, and probed the cool sheets until he touched the lightly warm springy skin and underlying bone. Dan startled, and Phil smiled into the pillowcase. He was tempted to tickle. He held himself back, just lightly drawing his nails up and down Dan’s hip, teasing the elastic rim of his pants. 

“Stop that,” Dan said irritably, impatiently. So Phil did, visions of turning over and tickling Dan until he squealed, until he acquiesced and then flipped them, held Phil pinned the bed with that combination of gentle bravado and undeniable desire. 

Phil snuggled himself beneath the sheet and duvet, both hands beneath his chin with the covers drawn tight and the pillow separating them. “You’re not jet-lagged?” he repeated, louder this time. “The flight was 11 hours, Daniel… you might-- you might want to get some sleep.” His own chin was scratchy where his shoulder touched it. He tucked his feet up and pressed the cold bottoms to Dan’s shin. 

Dan bumped him away with his leg. “I’m okay,” said Dan as his leg hairs tickled Phil’s feet and he drew away, bringing his knees even higher, but Dan pursued him, bending from the left side of the bed until his knee went solidly into Phil’s bum, making him squirm away. Phil buckled down and gave up. He stopped moving. If Dan tried to push him out of bed, he’d clamp down on the sheet and duvet, and hopefully take Dan with him if he fell out of bed like an upended turtle.

Instead of ramming him, Dan said, “How can you sleep after that long flight? You slept hours on the plane.”

Phil rotated his hips and undulated his spine. Sleep retreated a little farther. The sheets were so warm, the feeling of Dan’s knee a brace against his butt, the faint tickle of arousal just barely stirring in his stomach. “I’m a sleepy guy,” he sighed out groggily. He tightened his bum and sent it softly into Dan’s knee. He rose slightly on Dan’s thigh. “You sneak into my bed and ask me why I’m sleeping? Got any.. any other ideas for coming here, then?”

Phil didn’t have to look back to hear the smirk in Dan’s voice. “You perverted little shit,” Dan chortled, and bumped him very purposefully with his thigh, now warm and hairy against Phil’s bum, wriggling a little before he relaxed and drew his leg away. Phil could hear the refrigerator humming in the slounge for a moment, the quick click of the compressor humming on, and then a siren wailed by on the street outside, before Dan murmured, “Maybe… maybe tomorrow then.”

Phil leaned his weight on one elbow and raised himself, looking over his shoulder. Dan’s curly mop of hair was silhouetted against the window glass, and then Dan turned his head and smiled at him, ran one hand down Phil’s spine over the t-shirt. Phil shivered. They both loved an early morning tumble, their testosterone heightened by sleeping all night, a quick toothbrushing and an even quicker wee, one at a time to the bathroom, sometimes sliding past each other malevolently quickly, and then stripping down to nakedness in the early light, and god, Phil felt himself shake a little bit at the thought again.

Dan lay back, dropped the phone against his chest, the black surface indistinguishable against Dan’s gray pajama shirt. Phil twisted a bit and let his covers go, resting on his back, as Dan scrunched the pillow up beneath his head, pulling it into eighths folded to keep his head propped. Dan’s fingers tapped on the back of the IPhone. Phil blinked up at the ceiling and rubbed a hand across his eyes. He cleared his throat again. He could make out most major details of the room, but it didn’t take an expert in body language, only nine years of companionship with Dan to tell him that Dan was waiting to say something. 

Finally Dan said, “You know how I am after events.”

“The tour was 72 stops, so I think it’s a bit more than events,” Phil said. “Post-tour crash was hard enough last time.” He yawned again.

He heard Dan smile, the quick exhalation of breath followed by that amused tone, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

Phil wrested his left hand from beneath the covers and dropped his knuckles to tap lightly on Dan’s wrist as it held the iPhone to his chest. Phil’s vision didn’t help him connect. It was that they were the same height, and Phil had many years of experience of seeking him, in whole or in part, in the beds they’d shared over years.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Dan apologized softly.

“I just don’t want you to stare at a phone half the night, and then be grumpy or tired, or hurt your neck,” answered Phil. “Put it away now, and sleep some, please.”

“I’m fine,” Dan repeated. Phil hated that word when Dan said it like that. Dan twisted his knuckles until they threaded slightly through Phil’s semi-opened fingers. “We were in Brazil this morning,” replied Dan, and Phil squeezed hard enough that he thought he might knock him off course, but Dan said, “Or this afternoon. Or this morning, but we flew into night. Whatever bloody time we landed here. That flight was good. On-time. Long.” 

Phil nodded, swallowed, felt his eyes dropping shut with each word. Then Dan said, “Felt like we were with Troye in that movie, yeah?” Phil snapped back to attention. So this is what it was. They had surreptitiously watched Boy Erased as the in-flight entertainment, before returning to their downloaded media or work e-mails, side-by-side in first class. The movie had shown while they were being served a meal, and each time that the flight attendant had moved close to refill a drink, Phil had noticed that Dan would lean way too far forward, as though he were trying to cover his selection on the high strapped entertainment modules on the bulkhead in front of them. They loved downloaded media or using the time to edit, but extra foot room in the front row also meant higher-mounted screens. Dan had often told him that he would deal with cramped knees if it meant that everyone behind them didn’t get to watch their movies and judge their choices.

“It was a good movie,” Phil answered. It was Phil-speak for definite neutral non-opinion. Dan fidgeted in the bed and then glanced at his phone once before it turning it face down onto his chest again. Phil pulled his hand back to himself and waited. 

Finally he said gently into the darkness of his bedroom, “Nobody thought anything of us watching it. If they even knew who we were, it was because they knew we supported Troye.” Dan immediately waved his free hand dismissively, and Phil quirked his lips as he turned his head to the side. Dan was blinking, lying completely back in the bed, next to him. Each sweep of lash, each swallow of his throat, was close enough for Phil to hear the clicks and see the fine hairs move on his cheeks or throat. There had been several countries on tour where they could not dare even share a hotel suite, even if it had two bedrooms, due to local laws. Phil had missed these moments, when Dan was thinking as he so often did, deeply and with gusto, but Phil could snuggle a foot away and study him openly. 

“It was just a movie,” Dan said, “no one cared.”

“Then why are you in my bed in the middle of the night?” Phil asked again. Such a thing didn't just happen out of the blue. Usually it precipitated an agitated Daniel or a sad Daniel, or a Daniel with a thought that had burrowed down into the bottom of his brain. Phil couldn't tell which one was portended this time. Dan frowned, those little crinkle lines coming out beneath the eye nearest Phil. Every tour, he lost so much weight and lamented putting it back on. But Phil found the crinkles so perfect, so cute, driven lines that reminded him of times when Dan laughed until he cried, until he had to hold his sides and collapse into a chair or on the floor. Phil missed not just the early morning sex but this feeling that he could say a joke or make an observation, and Dan would giggle unexpectedly. Phil rubbed one eye with his thumb. His eyes were burning. 

“I -- huh, I --” Dan drew away, clutching his knee back with one hand and shifting away from Phil. 

Phil waited. When Dan peeked at him from the corner of his eye, Phil stuck his tongue out at Dan. Dan shook his head and his laughter shook the bed, compressed in his chest, never leaving his mouth, a repressed snort sharply barking in the quiet room. He blinked rapidly at the ceiling of Phil’s bedroom. Phil rubbed his hand against the pillowcase, feeling the cool sheets beneath his knuckles, waiting.

When Phil began to drift again, his eyelids heavier, he brought himself back to wakefulness when Dan said, in that voice that always bespoke to Phil a greater vulnerability, a voice he never used in any video, a voice that brought Phil flying back down to earth and through years, “That boy in that movie -- he was something, right? He became a journalist. After all that had happened to him.” Here Dan stopped. 

Phil prompted him, “Everything worked out in the end.”

“Yeah,” whispered Dan, and then he looked back at Phil again. Now Phil felt his stomach turn over and he stiffened up a bit in his bed. Dan’s eyes were glinting brightly in the reflection of Phil’s branches, moreso than eyestrain from endless scrolling in the night should cause, and his breath was hitchy, and Phil could hear the faint sheet of heavy rattling in Dan’s chest. 

“What? What?” he ran his thumb over Dan’s scratchy chin. “What?” he begged again. “You can tell me.”

Phil felt Dan’s cheeks curl into a smile, his lips faintly pursed, and he turned his head and said against Phil’s fingers, “I know I can tell you.” He cleared his throat as he drew back. When he looked at Phil again, Dan’s voice was more firm. “That’s the reason.”

It was too late at night for Phil to do the mental gymnastics required to connect their conversation pieces from a movie back to Dan sneaking into Phil’s bed in the night. “The reason for… What are you on about?” 

Dan swallowed. “That young man, he went to university, met that other boy,” and here Phil heard him begin to slowly spool out the reasons, but he saw the outlines of the road before Dan could reveal it. He was shaking his head as Dan said, “They ran They were runners. Played video games. Perfect friends.”

“No,” said Phil, “Not …. not anything like us. They weren't anything like us, like how we were.” He himself had sat next to Dan on the plane, watching the awkward first moments of that relationship play out, the growing confidence, admired how the director had filmed them running from behind, so close and yet not touching.

“When he climbed up into the bed, and then climbed out of it, I thought---” Dan smiled and looked away. “I thought-- I thought, my god, there’s going to be a porno on the plane.” Phil chuckled and Dan reached his hand out and traced Phil’s shoulder, and they smiled into the darkness, Phil gazing at Dan while Dan stared at the ceiling. Then Dan blinked, and said softly, “When he climbed down, and you saw his shorts all loose on his hips, and crawled under the covers, they showed Jared's face then, how he leaned his chin over that other boy’s shoulder and rested it, pulled him in, as the blanket rose up and then fell again around them.”

“Careful, Howell,” growled Phil mockingly, “you’re about to make a porno in Philly’s room.” The last three words were pitched suddenly higher.

Dan rolled his eyes and looked back at Phil, and then his eyes were glinting again, and all pretense was lost for Phil to lighten this mood. “But they weren’t like us, Phil,” he agreed, and here a tear actually dripped a bit until Dan wiped it away with a rough movement. Phil ignored it. It was better to let Dan think that he hadn’t seen that brief wetness on Dan’s cheek. “They weren’t us. They weren’t anything like us. The way he--” Dan sighed heavily and deeply, “the way he held his hand over his mouth, the sound of Jared begging him to stop -- how he, how he just took what he wanted, without even--”

Phil shushed him suddenly and said, “We didn’t know that the movie would have a rape scene in it.”

“But that’s what made me -- I was thinking,” insisted Dan, and here he curled himself down off the massively folded pillow to bring his face as close to Phil without kissing him. Phil could feel Dan’s faint breath on his cheeks and chin. He smelled of the wine he drunk in a simple toast as soon as they’d dumped their Brazil luggage in the lounge. Phil squinted at him as Dan looked into his eyes, at his lips, and then at his eyes again. “It wasn’t a love scene. Even though you’d expect it to be. It wasn’t anything close to one. I mean, with the subject matter, and the way they’d shot their early conversations, I thought, _oh here comes the first university boyfriend_ , check. You thought Jared goes to college, gets a boyfriend, it was going to be flickering vanilla candles and Celine Dion playing softly in the background, or at least some hot softcore cutaway like Call Me By Your Name, but it wasn’t,” he emphasized. “It wasn’t.”

Dan shook his head. “It wasn’t a love scene, at all.”

Phil shifted his hips closer to Dan, ran a hand lightly down his shoulder as they were curled together. “And, huh, why exactly did that rape scene put you in my bed in the middle of the night?”

“Because, because,” Dan stumbled the way he did when Phil knew his mind was outrunning his words, how he struggled to bring the thought to the surface, so Phil rubbed his fingernails against Dan’s collarbone again, and nodded, encouraging him. 

“It was the beginning of a love scene, until it wasn’t,” Dan repeated, and then added, “Because he didn’t ask for permission to do the things he did.”

Ah, Phil saw, _there it was_.

Dan wiped the corner of his eye again, and said, “What’s tonight?” Phil squinted at him and then looked away. When he looked back, Dan was staring at him in shock, mumbling, "I can't believe you've forgotten. Nine years? From the first week of December?"

“Nine years,” answered Phil, “... oh, god, tonight.” Phil kept his eyes lowered at first, swallowing around the lump in his throat. Leave it to Dan to remember. He probably had it marked somewhere, had probably purchased the iPhoneX and set a reminder immediately. When he looked back up, Dan was rolling his eyes, probably for the second time. In each garden, thought Phil, there are flowers which grow wild without much help, and those who demand to be tended, and God help you if you don't remember when you watered them last. Each year, around this time, Dan needed his watering. The two of them, the conglomerate known as ii or Dan and Phil, or the British vlogging team, whatever they were called that week, they dropped out of sight for a few days - pre-recording videos or posting some Instagram nonsense, but always, the real lads - Daniel and Phillip - were scheduled for rest and relaxation during the first week of December.

“Nine years,” said Dan, and grinned with his eyes sparkling in the faint light from Phil's bedside fairy lights, and when Phil looked away and glanced at him again, the white shine of his teeth in the faint light creeping from the corner made something warm turn over in Phil’s stomach. _I'm like a weed compared to him_ , Phil thought. He was the only person who could cry and laugh at the same time and make it seem effortless. Phil envied him this connection to the bittersweet joy of everything. “Nine years since we, since we-- huh -- first--”

“Fucked,” supplied Phil nonchalantly. Dan, the most filthy-mouthed prude that Phil had ever known, immediately stopped smiling and sucked his lips softly. “I mean,” said Phil with faint emphasis, “.. made love. Enjoyed each other’s secret pleasures. Partook of carnal desires with one another.” With each phrase, he leaned in until his forehead tapped Dan's forehead.

“I swear to God,” Dan began, and made to hit him with the pillow. Phil yelped and threw a hand up in mock dismay, and Dan startled back. Their torsos separated briefly and their knees knocked. Dan grabbed his pillow and pulled it closer to Phil and then narrowed his eyes as Phil settled back down into his duvet, waiting for Phil’s mischievous laughter to die away, before he drew near again, settling like a log close to Phil. He was so warm. He smelled warm. He had always smelled warm.

Phil said again, gently, “So what’s up, Howell?”

Dan tapped his fingers against Phil’s elbow as it bent to allow his hand access to Dan’s collarbone, and Phil looked down, seeing them drawn endlessly as a loop, a curve with no end, as Dan said, “People think we fucked on the floor of Manchester Picadilly.”

“You’d just been on a four-hour train trip,” answered Phil, and shook his head. “And with everything else happening in your life.” Phil had learned years later that the fight that Dan had kept so quiet about had actually involved a threat of kicking him out of the house if he traveled north to meet “that boy from the Internet.” _Screw same-sex marriage_ , thought Phil, _give me a law that says homeless youth can have services if your family kicks you out over something you can’t change_. Kathryn and Nigel would have cut out their own tongues rather than casually threatening to change the locks to the house during any argument with their sons. 

Dan drew a deep breath. “But we didn’t fuck on the floor of the station,” he said, and here Phil felt his fingers tracing Phil’s neck and cheek, and he closed his eyes in pleasure, “or at your house later that weekend. We talked music, and videos, and filmed, and played games.”

“And we snogged, don’t forget snogged,” encouraged Phil. He tapped his own lips and then said, “Before I knew that kissing you wasn’t exactly the best in the winter.” He fake shuddered, just to feel Dan’s shoulder drop quickly.

This trick worked. Dan sighed and groaned.

“You’re an asshole,” murmured Dan and Phil, eyes still closed, growled and snarled against Dan’s fingers exploring his lips and jaw with the faintest touch, “don’t bite me, you beast.” He settled down. Dan’s fingers were on his forehead and tugging through his quiff then. “We snogged,” the word sounded like Dan had to physically expel it for Phil’s benefit, “at Halloween, and there was that little over-the-pants action when we were in town that night, but mostly you kept me in Martyn’s empty bedroom for all my visits.”

“Until the first week of December.”

“Until the first week of December. And then, even then, you kept saying to me, is this alright? Like that? You okay?” Dan’s voice softened even further, the weight of memory drawing them both down the well back to that time when they didn’t know each other’s buttons, and fetishes, and the quickest way to wrest an orgasm from each other, or draw it out painstakingly slowly. Phil’s clearest memory of those four nights was Dan’s stomach quivering in delight, the tiny muscles fluttering beneath his skin as he twisted and moved, how they looked like one of those undersea creatures called manta rays, rolling through the ocean, muscle and power. Phil opened his eyes. Dan smiled again, and his voice was full of tears, as he whispered, “You would never do to me what that boy did to Jared in the movie.”

Phil and Dan didn’t touch each other outside of their apartment, long drilled into themselves that their personal and private life was their own business only, but shared sometimes suites or hotel rooms or bed and breakfasts. Manila was going to be a problem, though, so Martyn had booked a house because he knew that Phil needed a small reprieve before going into a repressive environment. The Australia house had two king suites and Phil would always remember, even though they had the brevity to sleep together in the bed, that Dan had insisted that they clasp their hands over each other’s mouths with Martyn and Cornelia in the other suite. In his mind, he saw that boy get hurt by extending his trust in the film they’d watched, how quickly things went wrong for him, and then he saw himself straining with his hand over Dan’s mouth in Australia, face to face as he grunted and moved his hips into Dan’s hips, desire clouding their eyes, until his hand had slipped too high and Dan had choked a bit, and he had given Phil that shocked, slightly offended wide-eyed look which Phil was so familiar with, whether it was over a stolen bagel or nearly choking him to death. Phil had chortled and then was immediately embarrassed, mouthed _I’m sorry_ , and Dan rolled his eyes and hissed _be quiet_ , and for a minute they were still, until suddenly someone sneezed across the house, and they had collapsed on each other laughing but holding it until their ribs ached, the bed squeaking underneath them, even as Dan fussed at him to quit it, that Martyn and Cornelia would hear, then Phil’s mind flashed back to that boy laying in the bed where he’d been violated, clutching the blanket, looking at a man sitting in the floor of an American university dorm, listening to his rapist crying and droning on about how he was so ashamed that he would get caught, that this experience was all about him getting caught. 

Same movement, this clasp of fingers over mouth, dramatically different intent, all because of this thing between them that Dan was describing.

Dan said to him, leaned his forehead to Phil’s forehead and murmured, “I never really said…. thank you. For what you did for me then.” 

Phil jerked a bit and shook his head, said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You do,” Dan insisted. He narrowed his eyes at Phil. Phil looked away, stopped Dan’s hands from stroking his shoulder and cheek.

“If anything,” Phil replied, “I should be thanking you. For letting me do it to you.”

Dan's blink stayed too long. Dan looked like one of those closed-eyes cherubs in a Botticelli painting. Sexual buttons weren't the only thing that Phil was familiar with after nine years. _Oh God_ , thought Phil, _here it comes_. Dan sternly said, “Phil, the phrase _"do it"_ is something that I don't want to hear. Ever again. I thought we were supposed to be lovers. Isn’t this romantic to remember the first instance of our lovemaking and listen to me thank you for your gentleness on the night?” Phil widened his eyes at Dan at that insistence, and for a moment Dan’s tongue poked into the corner of his mouth, and Phil thought, _two can play this game_. Dan always gave as good as he got, and he knew Phil's buttons, hidden in an emotional minefield, labeled at the edge of the run with a sign that read, _do not talk seriously about love or death, or point out the good work of Phil Lester._

Phil pulled his arms from Dan’s embrace and rolled onto his back, bouncing the mirrored headboard into the wall behind it. As he moved, he looked at Dan from the corner of his eye. Dan stiffened and then sighed dramatically as Phil continued to arrange the sheet and duvet over him. “What? Where…. where are you going?” 

Finally Phil flipped over and unceremoniously shoved his bum into Dan’s crotch. Instantly, as though they were not two long-limbed creatures, Dan squirmed his hips away. Phil told him reluctantly, “I know… I was very gentle.” The word tasted like too-sweet caramel in his mouth.

“You were,” Dan insisted, leaning down into Phil’s ear, one arm capturing Phil’s body in a bear hug. “You took your time and made sure that I was present and everything was consensual, and that I was enjoying myself, because you, sir…” he hissed .. “are a gentleman.”

“Jesus Christ,” Phil muttered as he tucked his cheek against the pillow, looked at the dresser stand and felt Dan breathe on his neck, silently vowing his revenge. Dan knew he hated talking about himself as white knight. “What Regency house novel did you fall out of? You take that back.” Dan leaned away, and rolled over onto his back, arranging his pillow again under him, scrambling for the phone which had fallen between them. “And besides,” Phil poked at the softest flesh, “if we’re going to wax poetic about first sexual experiences, when did we first try… oh, I don’t know, first anal?” He pretended to muse on it as Dan flipped the duvet in a snapping sound over his chest. “Was it Portugal? Or…. Jamaica? I know that it wasn’t Italy, too many people.”

“You’re ruining it,” Dan said.

“Or the anal beads? Do you _lovingly_ remember the first time we used those?” Phil could hear Dan’s shocked squeak, like a mouse that was running away in desperation. 

“You’re ruining it.”

“I’m not,” Phil gave a single little giggle that was barely covered by the thick cotton of the sheet and duvet. He snuggled deeper into his bed.

“You are,” Dan said. 

“I’m not,” Phil replied.

A few moments passed. “You are,” Dan said faintly.

Phil smiled broadly into the darkened corner. His phone still charged. The glass of water was there if he needed to drink. He lifted the sheet and ran a hand backward until he found Dan’s stomach, and before Dan could move away, he slid his hand up to his rib and then down to his hip, and then over. What he felt there warmed at once, and Phil smiled to himself. 

“Tomorrow,” he promised staunchly, taking his hand away and tucking it back under the pillow, one leg drifting up and away from Dan, “you’ll have to think of a way to pay me back for taking up so much space in my bed.” Dan snorted. Phil settled himself down.

Finally Dan asked, “Did I consent to that?” Phil exhaled sharply, the laughter in him soaking into the covers, and he felt Dan relax next to him. It was the closest to the apology that their teasing had evoked. It was a phrase that had worked its way into their videos over the years. As his mind unspiraled all those instances and more, Phil sighed and sneakily swiped at his own eyes, quickly, before Dan realized what he was about. 

Dan loved to talk about consent. Why was that? Evidently, he’d been holding onto to something that only this damn movie had awakened. 

“No, you didn’t consent,” Phil told him, “so I’ll stop.” He waited a moment. There was a faint whine from Dan on the left side of the bed. He smiled to himself. “I have to stop,” he repeated.

He thought that Dan wouldn’t respond to him, until a few moments later, long enough that he was shook out of a quiet reverie, Dan’s thick voice said, “You always do, you never make me do anything.. that I don’t wanna do.” Dan cleared his throat roughly and Phil felt his own throat constrict with hot heat. He moved his covers then, and Phil felt them fall over his hips and chest, as Dan kissed the soft mound of duvet over Phil’s shoulder, and then leaned his head against Phil’s neck. Phil remembered the boy in the movie, watching another person come into his bed for the first time, how he had tilted his chin to hold the entire long length of muscle from throat to collarbone, and felt Dan hold him the same way for a single moment.

Then he shook himself and barely turned his head to say, “Save it for morning, because we are going to fuuu-uuhh-uuuk.” Even as he drew the word out, he felt the grumble against his neck, and Dan pursed his lips for a moment against Phil’s ear. 

Dan whispered, “You’re ruining it.” It’s the softest, most gentle voice that Dan had. That phrase, too, has wound its way into their video conversations, after living in their personal lives for so long. Whenever Dan says it, Phil knew, it is Dan-speak for something they dare not say, not in so many words, a phrase that says Dan is gladly ruined for the sake of ruination, by the only person in the world who is allowed to ruin things.

So Phil said, “I’m not.”

Dan snorted and rolled against his side of the bed, the bed frame creaking again as a second six-foot tall man turned completely over. He repeated, “You are.” Phil could hear him arranging his doubled up pillow and then the clink of the phone as it was tapped into Dan's charger. The emphasis would sound whiny to anyone else, and perhaps it sounds whiny to Phil at times, but mostly it sounds like a warm animal cry, like Dan is a creature that only Phil can hear.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Phil thought of lyrics from a song that Dan keeps on repeat on Spotify: _You vibrate out my frequency_.

Within a minute, Dan made his sushi roll out of the duvet as Phil had done on his side of the bed. Just as his breathing is evened out, Phil shifted himself backward and shoved his butt directly against Dan’s butt. The tour was done. Nothing needed now until the end of the year. Except PINOF, which grew more Dadaist each year. He remembered Dan’s assertion that people thought they had tackled each other on the floor of Manchester Piccadilly, that strangers believed they had such desires, forgetting that they were so young and unsure back then. They didn't come into this relationship full fledged and comfortable with each other. Perhaps Phil would try to give the people what they wanted during PINOF and make sure he remembered their first weekend together, albeit a little differently than they all did.

But now Phil just wanted to enjoy some contact tonight, before the rush for content and money and giving the people what they wanted began again. Dan’s butt was softer and wider than Phil’s bony ass. It comforted him in the way that coming home to see fresh flowers in the vases and XBox controllers scattered on the floor and a single half-drawn concept art for merch attached to the desk with sticky tac and a baker’s dozen chocolate chip cookies on the counter, warm and gooey, from the bakery down the street, with a loopily handwritten note that read sternly, _Do not eat all of these, you spork_. Phil undulated his hips up into Dan's wider bottom, and Dan murmured softly, in irritation or acceptance, until suddenly Phil felt him press back into Phil's movement from the other side of Phil's bed.

Phil opened his mouth to say something, not sure if he was dreaming yet, but Dan mused sleepily, “What does it mean..... when you sleep butt to butt with somebody? Shouldn’t we be spooned-- spooning or something? Or at least fa--facing each other? Our fanfic writers would be …..so very, very.... disappointed.”

Phil tucked his pillow tighter under him and wiggled his butt against Dan’s butt. “We can spoon our pillows,” he murmured, sleep begun to take him away. “We’re ready… ready for anything… in case we're attacked... we're ready for ninjas-- ninjas in the slounge….” 

Dan groaned. “Christ, no….. now I’m going to dream ….. ab-about ninjasss.” His voice was so heavy with sleep that he slurred and then faintly snored. Phil smiled, eyes closed, butt warmed, slightly jet-lagged, on the ninth anniversary of the first time they’d tumbled into bed together. 

“You go then,” he whispered, “I’m right behind you.”


End file.
